Greenville County’s Historic and Natural Resources Trust has announced plans to spend $500,000 on a 65-acre addition to Paris Mountain State Park.
HNRT board chair Pam Shucker and secretary Dennis DeFrancesco shared the update during a Greenville County Council Finance Committee meeting Nov. 18. The county’s half-million would be matched by $2.4 million in state and federal funding, according to DeFrancesco.
The full HNRT board will vote on whether to approve the purchase during its next meeting, expected to be held Dec. 16. Funding is already available as part of the trust’s annual allocation from the county. It would increase the state park to nearly 1,900 acres.
Read more about Paris Mountain State Park
The two parcels, one 56.4 acres and the other 9 acres, border the northeast edge of the state park. The larger parcel has frontage on State Park Road. The parcels include a home and a two-acre lake. Ownership would be transferred in 2025 to South Carolina Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism, which operates all state parks.
DeFrancesco said visitation to Paris Mountain State Park has quadrupled in the past five years. The new property would expand the existing trail network and add another access point with parking.
If approved, it would be the second significant expansion of Paris Mountain State Park in the past few years. The purchase of Shiloh Ridge, on the west side of the park, added nearly 150 acres in 2022. Upstate Forever already held a conservation easement on most of that property, preventing development. Naturaland Trust contributed an additional 120 nearby acres at the same time, bringing the total expansion to almost 270 acres.
The Greenville County Historic and Natural Resources Trust board includes 12 seats – one for each County Council district. It was created in 2021 and is funded annually through the county budget. Its mission is to preserve “the special places that give our community its character,” according to its website.
Shucker told the Finance Committee HNRT has helped protect 2,100 acres across 18 projects since its creation, and that each dollar spent has been matched by more than five dollars in state and federal funding.
